Occupy Windsor’s Future

The problem with a leaderless movement like Occupy Windsor is, well, there’s always that real danger it can prance off wildly in all directions and there’s no, well, leader to rein it back in.

I think two months of consensus-seeking under the canvas tops at Senator David A. Croll Park probably had some of the occupiers thinking, ‘Damn, we could sure use a leader here.’ And maybe: ‘Can we get something done here, please?’

“We needed some kind of structure and leadership — that was lacking,” protester Greg Rivard gave me as one possible explanation for Occupy Windsor’s decision to decamp a week ago after two months in the park.

Other Occupy cities saw terrified municipal leaders calling in baton-wielding and teargas-lobbing riot police, but Windsor’s leaders played it cool, and the local camp was allowed to fizzle away on its own ahead of winter snows.

With disagreements over such banalities as how to allocate donations of food and money, the protest was losing its focus on the real issue — getting the 1%’ers at the top of the social food chain, as well as their political and banker enablers, to show a little more respect for the rest of us below them.

As a species, alas, humans are just imperfect animals, and without someone leading the way, even if it’s towards that utopian future, the best we can do — that is, lacking a philosopher king as benevolent dictator — is participatory democracy. Meaning the kind of boring oft-unsatisfactory stuff the Occupy camp might have found inside the adjacent city hall.

No longer having to run a tent village bureaucracy, the protesters are now free to tackle those big ideas.

Windsor’s “Occupy the Future” takes place Saturday (17th) at 1 p.m. outside city hall. There will be speakers, then a march and finally a rally where anyone with a constructive idea is free to climb the soapbox and address the gathering.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Robert Mittag told me. Known to his fellow Occupiers as Rockin Robbee, he’s spent his life “chasing my dream” of being a professional musician.

Outside the dream, he’s a licensed industrial electrician with two college diplomas who had been employed in machine building at Windsor’s automotive shops. But that was during the city’s manufacturing heyday, and he, like his hometown, has fallen on hard times.

“No one wants me anymore,” said Rockin Robbee, 56. His last real job was in 1999, when he was paid $25 an hour. His last few jobs have been minimum wage, which he doesn’t feel is a livable wage (who would?). He’s been “off and on” welfare for the past decade.

“It’s not the outcome I saw for me and my life,” said the gentle and well-spoken man, who has three brothers and three sisters and lives in subsidized city housing.

A job paying $18 an hour and up — that would provide for a lifestyle with dignity, said Robbee.

Rockin Robbee, who did night watch at the Occupy Windsor camp, performed in the 1970s Detroit band The Seatbelts which had one of its recorded songs played by Dick Clark on American Bandstand.

He came upon the camp by accident on one of his trips to the Downtown Mission for his daily meal.

That’s called hope. Occupy Windsor may have been challenged in articulating to the rest of us what it wants and, more importantly, how to achieve it, but for those drawn to it, it’s a community and a means of putting a public face on something too often hidden away.

“You know that saying, ‘Out of sight, out of mind,'” said Ron Pritchard. That was Ron, who was living under a bridge on University Avenue until the day he walked by the camp and was invited in for coffee. He stayed.

“I’m not really into politics, but I’m learning,” Ron said. He thought it was pretty cool waking up at the start of a new day and being greeted with a “Good Morning, Ron.”

Dignity, kindness and community are words you hear a lot from the Occupiers.

The campers aren’t all wonderful souls living in harmony with the world, and even those in the local movement said there are some with issues. Charles Castillo has a wonderful description of how he was kicked out of the U.S. and forced to return home: “I ran into some problems … in my aggressive pursuit of some non-violent crimes.”

But Charles was welcomed and didn’t feel judged at Occupy Windsor, where he said he “built a lot of camaraderie.”

When it comes to the politicians, government, the well-to-do and the media, there is plenty of anger and suspicion with this bunch. And why not? When you don’t have a job, a decent home or even a secure next meal, yet you’re surrounded by wealth and consumerism, it’s probably easy to fall into that.

There was nervousness leading up to Remembrance Day, when thousands of Windsorites descended on the cenotaph square adjacent the Occupy camp to show their respect for those who donned uniform and fought and died for Canada. Lots of police and officials and political, business and community leaders.

And then a surprise.

“It shocked us when the soldiers came over and said, ‘We fought for the same thing,'” Greg Rivard.

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The Jesus flag is not welcome at city hall. Councillors agreed Monday night with a report from city administration to deny a request to fly a flag in support of the annual March for Jesus scheduled for Aug. 22.